Around 2 million people depend on India's informal waste-picking economy. They work from sunrise to sunset, travelling up to ten miles a day, supporting loads of 40 kg on their heads. Daily, they contend with cats, dogs and vermin; needles, metal shards and glass fragments. They work among unstable landfills, where mountains of waste sporadically collapse, trapping those inside. They are cheated by scrap dealers who fix the weights of scales. They are ostracised by citizens and harassed by the police.

And they are 92 percent female.

Shailaja, an activist for Kagad Kach Patra Kastakari Panchayat (KKPKP), a waste pickers' cooperative in Pune, explained the occupation's distinctly gendered composition. In 1972 a drought in Maharashtra drove poor rural families to Pune. Men found work as labourers but women, on account of their gender and caste, were unable to secure 'respectable work'.

Still today, only the most vulnerable collect waste: almost all are women, the majority are Dalit and a third have been widowed or deserted. With no other skills or education they are forced to endure dangerous conditions and work long hours for around 60 rupees (70 pence) a day. KKPKP estimates that half of these women contribute at least 50 percent of household income.

Despite collectively cleaning the country, scrap collection is not recognised as work, nor scrap collectors as workers. Consequently, waste pickers receive no employment guarantee, regular wage of state benefits. Given the dangerous and insecure nature of the work, it is a fragile existence.

Although successive governments have pledged to guarantee the rights of women, measures invariably fall short. The National Commission for Women Act, 1990, first sought to safeguard against gender discrimination, introducing 33 percent reservation of seats for women in political bodies and select public institutions.

But India's waste pickers are not recognised in official statistics. Indeed, a recent report by the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies revealed that well over 90 percent of employment in India is 'informal' or 'unrecognised' labour. State-level policies to guarantee labour rights and break down gender-based discrimination only have an impact on a minority; those that most need support – vulnerable women in low-paid, dangerous employment – are ignored, unrecognised.

Moreover, women in vulnerable employment are powerless to challenge gender discrimination and assert the same rights as their male counterparts. According to the International Labour Organisation, illiterate women working in unskilled occupations can expect an average of 85 rupees per day; illiterate men doing such work receive 177 rupees.

Despite the World Bank's decree to put "resources into the hands of poor women", few women in India have profited: the majority continue to endure lower pay, longer hours and fewer opportunities than men. But as I found in Pune, empowering women has wide-reaching effects on the lives and wellbeing of low-income families in India.

For Saru Bai and 7000 women in Pune, life has changed. In 1993, a waste pickers' collective, the KKPKP, was formed to address inequities in the unregulated waste-picking economy.

After twenty years of activism, waste pickers now boast identity cards authorised by Pune Municipal Corporation, a health insurance plan, and defined areas for collection. They no longer visit dangerous landfills; exploitation by scrap dealers and harassment by the police has ceased; and waste pickers are respected for their service to the city's environment.

Before we were "counted among the animals," says Saru Bai. But now, it has changed: "Citizens talk to me and call me into their house and say, 'Saru Bai, have some tea.'"

This paradigm shift in attitudes towards scrap collection, which has vastly improved working conditions for female waste pickers, has been accompanied by astonishing socio-economic effects. With women empowered to demand fair remuneration for their work, waste-picking now provides a secure source of income for thousands of women. The generational cycle of waste-picking in Pune has been dismantled, leading to social uplift for thousands of families.

At a scrap dealer's shop I met ten women who were cashing in their day's collection. Counted among their siblings were a plumber, a painter, an MA, a BEd and a dental assistant. The extra income of female waste pickers has afforded families the means to educate their children with skills and training to secure a better life.

The opportunity for income generation and improved working conditions are such that increasingly men are being drawn towards this traditionally female occupation.

While World Bank rhetoric focuses on empowering women as a way to generate "large developmental payoffs" on a macro scale, we should not distance ourselves from the lives of individual women and families. There may be economic output, but the real payoff is in ending the abuse of Saru Bai; in empowering Vaishali to earn enough money to send her children to college. The impact of empowering women in the workplace is witnessed in the day-to-day work of grassroots organisations.

Pune is somewhat unique in its approach to waste pickers: across India, tens of thousands continue to suffer discrimination, exploitation and abuse; and millions of women in other vulnerable occupations see their rights to safe and secure employment denied. The country demands more local initiatives focusing on specific communities, to break down gender discrimination and empower women to secure their own futures and those of their children.

Although Shailaja reiterates that there is a long way to go, waste-picker activism in Pune has achieved this particular goal. Today, Saru Bai can stand proudly in front of her composting machine and tell me, "Now we save [and] my children will earn good money, so I'm happy."